In the fall of 2005, Edgar Jimenez Lugo spent afternoons at his uncle's newspaper stand on the central plaza in Cuernavaca, Mexico.
/ Armando Arizmendi

About this series

This four-part series, focused on a boy born in San Diego accused at age 14 of heinous crimes for a drug cartel, illustrates the expanse of a drug trade that ensnares adults and children on both sides of the border.

Union-Tribune reporters Morgan Lee and Janine Zúñiga have written the stories based on public records and interviews in Mexico and the United States.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

The 71-year-old widow was nearing the end of a 1,500-mile journey from central Mexico to restore order to the lives of her grandchildren.

A social worker held up a handmade sign to greet Carmen Solis Gil at the Tijuana airport and take her to adoption court in San Diego.

Carmen was preparing to be a mother all over again, this time to six grandchildren who were placed in foster care after the youngest, Edgar Jimenez Lugo, was born with cocaine in his bloodstream. She was filling in for a son and his common-law wife who had entered the United States illegally and fallen into a life of squalor and drug addiction.

In her home village of Tejalpa, Carmen had raised six children and had even taken in the destitute children of other families. Now, she and these grandchildren were going to live under one roof.

At a San Diego court hearing in August 1997, two Polaroid photographs were snapped. The faded images show a judge in a black robe towering over kids dressed in a clashing assemblage of overalls, skirts and sundresses. Edgar, a curly-haired toddler, balanced in the arms of a visiting aunt.

All trained their eyes on the camera, except for Carmen. She was smiling at the children.

The judge’s approval of the adoptions opened the way for U.S. aid to help support Edgar and his siblings once social workers in Mexico evaluated their care.

Few people understood at the time that drug lords had taken root in Cuernavaca, a vacation getaway a few miles from the children’s new home in Tejalpa.

For Teresa Jimenez Solis, one of Edgar’s aunts, memories of the adoption day are now colored with regret. She had traveled with Carmen to bring back the children.

“The judge gave my mother the adoption papers, congratulated her on her success, told her to take care of the kids,” Teresa said. “The only thing that failed us is that I never thought my mother was going to die. At the time, we never asked who would take the place of my mother.”

Adoption day for Edgar Jimenez Lugo and his brothers and sister in August 1997. His grandmother, Carmen Solis Gil, is second from left. Edgar is in the arms of an aunt.
/ Courtesy photo

One true protector

Carmen and the grandchildren returned to a cluster of cinder-block homes set among a maze of narrow streets on the far southern flanks of tropical volcanoes.

Up before dawn, Carmen made sure school uniforms were pressed and shoes were polished. A cry went up from the kitchen to make sure all six children were awake: “Elizabeth! David!”

Behind the heavy steel doors of the family compound, Edgar shadowed Carmen around the kitchen and out to an open-air courtyard of plants and clotheslines.

Relatives pitched in to take care of him. They fawned over the tiny boy with full lips and long dark lashes. They gave him a playful nickname — “Ponchis” — taken from a Mexican beer ad featuring a bombshell actress.